pumpkin-quest
Pumpkin Quest
Dungeons and Dragons side blog with
other online and tabletop RP shenanigans
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So! There's an ancient red dragon currently in possession of something our party needs to save the world. Bit shit because trying to get anything out of an ancient dragon's horde is a very good way to end up incredibly dead. Still, we come up with ideas and decide that while we don't want to fight the dragon (all being fans of staying alive) we are cool with robbing him. We'd just prefer he was out at the time.
We put in a lot of work spreading rumours of this great, fancy treasure a long way away from the mountains the lair is in. Then, kitted up as best we can manage, we strike out north!
We promptly fall into a doorway into the fire plane. And find a glittering city in the desert, promising every kind of vice you could want. Fire Plane Las Vegas.
We'd planned on a cave full of kobolds, and instead have a city full of all sorts. And our target? The city mayor.
It's a super fun twist that no one saw coming, and I suspect is partly payback for when we spent half a session dicking around getting horses and a wagon before deciding to travel by boat.
Anyway, we're now trying to access the seedy underworld element of the city to see if they know how to sneak into the mayoral Palace vault in exchange for a fuckload of water to sell at a premium.
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Druid cannot make today's game, so I'm running the character. There are a LOT of things to keep track of.
Drive it like you stole it?
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I got a dice throne and a time out chair for Christmas and today was my first in person session since getting them! The big glitter d20 was too big for the throne but well deserved the crown. I was starting to worry it was weighted it was rolling so well.
Suspect the time out chair will get more use at the next 13th Age game
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Rogue: I'm going to teach the kids to do crime
Bard: I'm going to teach them to play musical instruments. The ones that suck at it can learn 'crowd management' from the rogue
Cleric: ...that sounds suspiciously like something you have prior experience with
Bard: Look, it might not be 3rd edition any more, requiring bards to be non lawful, but there's a reputation to be maintained. Just saying
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...and continuation.
In our party's defense, the balance of power hasn't been completely static since the creation of the Orc Lord. The power of assorted Icons has ebbed and flowed, the individuals holding those titles have changed (with some of them at least), but it's all largely Bigger Picture Types getting involved.
And then we rock up. Originally on the Archmage's business, but when we ran out of task we just kept poking things until something broke.
Our job was to replace the crystals in a series of obelisks surrounding something called the Orc Well. So, off we went, dutifully doing our grunt work for the powers that be with only a few minor problems along the way (my character lost a fucking leg and just because the Druid was able to make it better, doesn't mean he's not still mad about it).
Once we were done, we were probably meant to just head back the way we came and either await further instruction or just fuck off and let the Archmage handle things from there. Only thing was, my Rogue was currently in position of a shard of the Elf Queen crown. And it wanted him to go to the Orc Well at the centre of these obelisks. His One Unique Thing in the game is that he's the only elf lacking the connection all elves have with each other through the Elf Queen. But this crown shard is giving him a connection to...something. He wants to know what it is. And bunch of chaos goblins or not, the rest of the party aren't going to leave him to just go off and get himself killed trying to see this through.
So, we head inwards and start encountering...weirdness. We get attacked by a group of orcs. We fight back, we win, their bodies turn into elves, and my elf suddenly feels violently ill, as if he's just witnessed the worst atrocity of his life right before his eyes. The feeling fades, but doesn't totally disappear. We hear other voices speaking Orcish out in the distance, confused and unsure what they're doing here, but feeling an urge to go in a particular direction. And then there's a bright blue flash and the voices go silent. Upon investigating, we find patches of ground where large numbers of people have been recently, but are now gone, with no footprints to show they walked away from the area.
We keep going.
The Orc Well is a mile wide hole in the middle of scrubby forest land. Around it are thousands of people, all orcs, who are in varying stages of learning how to walk. They're very interested in my character, the only full elf in the party, because he seems familiar, even if they don't seem to understand why. They have no idea who they are, where they came from. All they know is they woke up in the pit and felt the overwhelming urge to...go somewhere.
We do our best to reassure them, all the while quietly freaking out because what the actual fuck is going on? But the crown shard in insistent, so on we go.
Inside the pit is even worse. The floor is covered in writhing bodies, fighting their way out of the mud and crawling over to the pit walls to climb their way out. At the centre of the Well is a heart in a magical cage, pierced by the rest of the crown.
There was A Lot of debate between the party on the walk over to the centre. Is this where all orcs come from? Is this how the Well is supposed to work? Are we complicit in the horror of these poor elves kidnapped, mindwiped, and sent out to die in whatever conflict the Orc Lord is being aimed at? If we now try and stop it, is that genocide because it'll wipe out the orcs? Acting and not acting are both absolutely horrific to contemplate, and we very much object to being dragged into someone else's Bigger Picture atrocity.
But the crown wants to be whole again. And while the heart is in a cage, the lock on that cage is not magic. And my character is a rogue. So...
This is where things start going extra wrong.
I unlock the cage. My Icon relationship with the Prince of Shadows vanishes.
The crown shard all but leaps out of my hand in its eagerness to become whole once more. The pierced heart begins to beat, weak at first but growing louder and ever more steady. My rogue and the druid, a half elf, get smacked in the face for a load of psychic damage. The connection I felt on the way here grows stronger. I lean into it and get a vision of the moment the Elf Queen claimed her mother's crown.
The Bard pulls the crown out of the heart...and then stabs it. Then puts the crown on my shell shocked head because of course he fucking does. And I get a new vision.
The Elf Queen still arguing with her sister, who is imprisoned by vines, still stating this was the only way to keep the world safe, the only way to stop the Lich King from rising and taking the mantel of Archmage as well as his own title. Then she sees me, sees the crown on my head, and knows where I must have got it. Also, she is FURIOUS that she can't sense me, that the connection she should have with my elven self just isn't there. Her sister on the other hand is Delighted this is occurring, and commands me to come and free her.
The vision clears. My Icon relationship with the Elf Queen has gone, but has been replaced by one with the Dream Princess. The Bard's Icon relationship with the Orc Lord has also gone, but not been replaced with anything. And, more alarmingly, the entire party has gained a positive Icon relationship with the Lich King, who is clearly also Delighted with what we've accomplished here today.
Around us in the Orc Well, the bodies on the floor have stopped moving. There is no sound from the thousands of people that were outside the Well.
So, to summarise - we might have killed the Orc Lord and destroyed the entire orc race. The Elf Queen is angry with us, and specifically pissed at me. The Archmage is going to be fucking furious we fixed his toy and then immediately broke it in a way worse way. And my personal favourite Icon, the Prince of Shadows, is apparently gone. Out of character, I at least don't think that one is our fault.
But hey, at least the Dream Princess currently likes us? Hopefully she's less hot on war crimes than her sister. Lich King though? Yeah, that's not a good look for us.
Once upon a time, back in the 4th Age, the Elf Queen had two daughters. The youngest was destined to become the next Elf Queen, the oldest destined to merely watch and become a footnote in her sister's story.
In this age there was also a powerful mage, who ruled his lands with an iron fist, and was growing in both strength and evil: The Wizard King.
The Elf Queen knew the Wizard King must be stopped, but she was old and her strength was failing. Much as it pained her, this fight belonged to the young, so she left it to her daughters to decide how to accomplish it. They disagreed and these disagreements turned ever more vicious and violent. The Elf Queen tried to intervene, her daughters would need each other in the fight to come. But the eldest, heart full of resentment from years of seeing her sister's destiny writ large upon the world, had a plan that was all her own and did not care who she would hurt in its implementation.
She plunged her fist into her mother's chest and tore it out, then snatched the Elf Crown from the collapsing body and placed it on her own head. A new Elf Queen had risen and destiny could go hang.
With the aid of another powerful mage, the Elf Queen worked a mighty spell to bring forth a fearsome warrior, one with the strength to challenge the Wizard King. They created a new icon for the age: The Orc Lord, the embodiment of strength, brutality, and military power. But a military commander needs an army, and powerful as the Elf Queen and her mage friend were, they couldn't conjure one from nothing. However, the power of the Elf Queen was such that she had a connection with all the elves of the world, and could bend them to her will and her purpose. Whole villages started to disappear, gone without a trace, never to be seen again. And if the exact same number of orcs as those missing villagers suddenly appeared to swell the Orc Lord's ranks...no one knew where orcs came from anyway and the world knew better than to question the Icons. No connection was ever made.
Despite it's horrors, the plan worked. The Wizard King was defeated and lay dead at the Orc Lord's feet. The Elf Queen's magical ally stepped in to fill the void left by his absence to become the first Archmage. While his purpose had been fulfilled, the Orc Lord could not simply be put away. He took what remained of his army and established his own power base in the north, carving what he wanted out of the territory of the Dwarf King. And so, while there was still war it was deemed necessary. For while the Wizard King had been struck down, his threat had not ended. He had taken precautions against his death, and now rose as the Lich King. But, with the balance of powers as they were, he was no more a threat than any of the other Icons, and the world settled back into its new balance of power.
Skip a few thousands years to the 13th Age when we arrive, and this careful balance all goes to hell in a hand basket.
To Be Continued...
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Once upon a time, back in the 4th Age, the Elf Queen had two daughters. The youngest was destined to become the next Elf Queen, the oldest destined to merely watch and become a footnote in her sister's story.
In this age there was also a powerful mage, who ruled his lands with an iron fist, and was growing in both strength and evil: The Wizard King.
The Elf Queen knew the Wizard King must be stopped, but she was old and her strength was failing. Much as it pained her, this fight belonged to the young, so she left it to her daughters to decide how to accomplish it. They disagreed and these disagreements turned ever more vicious and violent. The Elf Queen tried to intervene, her daughters would need each other in the fight to come. But the eldest, heart full of resentment from years of seeing her sister's destiny writ large upon the world, had a plan that was all her own and did not care who she would hurt in its implementation.
She plunged her fist into her mother's chest and tore it out, then snatched the Elf Crown from the collapsing body and placed it on her own head. A new Elf Queen had risen and destiny could go hang.
With the aid of another powerful mage, the Elf Queen worked a mighty spell to bring forth a fearsome warrior, one with the strength to challenge the Wizard King. They created a new icon for the age: The Orc Lord, the embodiment of strength, brutality, and military power. But a military commander needs an army, and powerful as the Elf Queen and her mage friend were, they couldn't conjure one from nothing. However, the power of the Elf Queen was such that she had a connection with all the elves of the world, and could bend them to her will and her purpose. Whole villages started to disappear, gone without a trace, never to be seen again. And if the exact same number of orcs as those missing villagers suddenly appeared to swell the Orc Lord's ranks...no one knew where orcs came from anyway and the world knew better than to question the Icons. No connection was ever made.
Despite it's horrors, the plan worked. The Wizard King was defeated and lay dead at the Orc Lord's feet. The Elf Queen's magical ally stepped in to fill the void left by his absence to become the first Archmage. While his purpose had been fulfilled, the Orc Lord could not simply be put away. He took what remained of his army and established his own power base in the north, carving what he wanted out of the territory of the Dwarf King. And so, while there was still war it was deemed necessary. For while the Wizard King had been struck down, his threat had not ended. He had taken precautions against his death, and now rose as the Lich King. But, with the balance of powers as they were, he was no more a threat than any of the other Icons, and the world settled back into its new balance of power.
Skip a few thousands years to the 13th Age when we arrive, and this careful balance all goes to hell in a hand basket.
To Be Continued...
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wizards thinking of clerics as hacks cause we spent years of study learning the secrets of the universe they cheated and got a god to do their magic for them
clerics thinking of wizards as hacks cause we spent years serving and cultivating a deeply personal relationship with a god they copied down some cheat codes to make stuff blow up
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I ran my first game of 5th edition! My first attempt at DMing anything since my campaign ended *mumble mumble* (I've legit forgotten, but it might be 4? Maybe 5?) years ago. And it went...well? Ish?
It was for a charity event, and one of the players was a young man who was clearly *incredibly* nervous about playing with a group of strangers, so I was a bit slack with the rules, but who really needs a rules lawyer anyway.? If the table is having fun and I don't need to remember my bizarre house ruling of things for more than a few hours, it's all good.
We played the pregen adventure "Heist at the Museum", which the venue provided, because while I enjoy the storytelling aspect of DMing, I *hate* coming up with maps and encounters. I'm not good at it and am generally just much happier if someone else does it for me.
The general set up is this group of thieves have been hired to steal The Tetrad Gems from the museum and deliver them to this posh dude in his house on the outskirts of town. They've been provided with Amulets of Escape to facilitate this. Use of these amulets will transport them to a predesignated teleportation circle. Easy life.
Problem was, the dice really seemed to want this poor party dead. The very first thing that happens is they knock over the Dinosaur statue in the museum, activating the automaton guards deeper within the exhibit hall, prompting them to have to retreat outside to hide until they've reset. Only thing is, they reset and went back into waiting mode right near the door they picked the lock for. So, they had to find another way in. Did result in some creative sleight of hand with a crowbar though, so that was fun.
They get the gems, load up on assorted other valuable trinkets on display, and then activate their amulets when a whole platoon of automatons turn up to investigate the break in.
The predesignated circle takes them to the middle of a port and cheese evening at the manor, where all the guests are wearing robes and having identical ornate daggers hidden upon their person. Because the game makers do not want this to be subtle and want the players to know they've been hired by a cult. Because handing over the stolen gems will be a Bad Idea and they want the players to be aware of this.
But this particular party, either due to youth (two of the players were children, with the oldest likely no older than 12 or 13) or inexperience (the nervous guy, who probably late teens at most tbh), were not genre savvy enough to truly take this in, and merrily handed over the gems and then hung around to wait for their payment.
This was good for me, because the part of the adventure I was most nervous about was how the posh dude was going to stay charming and attempt to get the players to hand over the gems without arousing suspicion before he finally got mad and ordered the cult to attack. But it was bad for them because it meant he could immediately disappear off into the back room and summon the Devlish Piper. A challenge rating 5 creature when the part couldn't have been higher than level 2.
There were, admittedly, many punches pulled during this fight. Because the Piper could have easily wiped the floor with all of them on his own. I had him roaming around, murdering the cultists rather than the players, had him smash a locked window to provide another escape route, and just pretended he didn't land a single blow on the last character left in the room (because the player was the youngest of the siblings and her brother's character had already escaped and there had been enough sibling bickering that I was not about to do that to their poor dad). I still had two of the players making death saving throws, only surviving by the skin of their teeth (and a lucky natural 20 where I may have elected to go by 4th ed rules), and the entire party had collectively less than 10 hp by the time they escaped.
But I think my favourite moment was the super nervous new guy looking at his inventory, spotting the firecrackers in their, and improvising it as a way to break a different window to make his escape easier. That's the sort of thinking that will help him go far in future games.
All in all, a fun few hours, and a very hard won but I still think well deserved victory.
#dungeons and dragons#d&d#dnd#rp#roleplay#d&d 5th edition#5th edition#the dice are not your friends#the dm is though
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So, it got worse. The fluffy dinosaur got to attack just once. But it crit. Did 60 points of damage to my rogue. Who has 48 hp. Ouch.
Thanks to the druid I get all my hp back pretty quickly, but I'm now down one leg. And one magic boot, but that's less of a priority to me right now. Luckily, druid got two 6s with the High Druid for icon rolls, so was able to trade one in for a ritual where he grows me a prosthetic! So that's awesome, even if poor rogue is a tiiiiiny bit weirded out by it still. But, you know, his body has just drastically changed after a traumatic event, he's allowed to need a few days to cope.
Later on we convince some lizard folk to help us in our quest by dressing it up as a ritual to bless their God. So we're both successful AND have a kick ass party. My new prosthetic sprouts flowers with all the nature energy floating about.
Then the chaos mage has horrific visions and is given hallucinogenic frog juice to help her calm down. It goes surprisingly well.
"You hear rustling in the undergrowth behind you, and turn just in time to see a very large feathered lizard creeping towards you. It's just on the brink of pouncing."
The druid immediately starts to run like fuck
Everyone else: "...that looks like our cue to leg it."
And then the Chaos Mage's high weirdness buggers up how space works, so things that are nearby count as far away and things that are far away count as nearby. God damn it...
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"You hear rustling in the undergrowth behind you, and turn just in time to see a very large feathered lizard creeping towards you. It's just on the brink of pouncing."
The druid immediately starts to run like fuck
Everyone else: "...that looks like our cue to leg it."
And then the Chaos Mage's high weirdness buggers up how space works, so things that are nearby count as far away and things that are far away count as nearby. God damn it...
#rp#roleplay#13th age#not d&d#my rogue is a city boy!#what is this magic jungle bullshit#epic quest to punch the Archmage in the god damn face
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"Don't rob the NPC while they're still alive. It's rude!"
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Once more for the "huzzah for malice rather than incompetence!" in RPs.
We've been investing the summer house of one of the Big Bad's principle agents. It's a god damn mess. Front door rigged up to a bomb, traps on every single door inside, and a snake pit under the stairs. And that's even before we get to the contents of the rooms! Every door we open, we quickly close with a pained groan at what we see. Until we find the room with the shark and a floating notebook. We figure we should probably try fetching that.
But when we start going through said notebook we find a bunch of mad ramblings, in keeping with the bonkers house, but a few hints that something has been hidden in the house to protect it. We've been told previously from one of this guy's friends that his personality abruptly changed a few years ago, so this seems to follow. And then we find a door with a series of keys...
So now the nightmare rooms become a series of interesting challenges! Trying to figure out where the keys inside have been hidden and how to get round the non combat threats also present in the house. Skill challenges, creative spell use, figuring out how to use our other skills to aid our comrades.
One of the best sessions I've had in ages!
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Sabotage!
For the past four or five sessions, our poor characters have been stumbling through a series of magical towers, dealing with assorted defenses and routine functions thar have gone horribly wrong (because the city they were defending fell out of the sky, it was a whole thing).
We knew we had to do something with a bunch of crystals, but due to IC miscommunication and OOC poor memory...we'd kind of lost track on exactly what. And some we swore we'd replaced in the tower defenses were turning back up in our bags again.
We were all very confused.
However, we finally fought and explored our way through to a series of portal doors that gave us access to the crystal cages at the tops of the towers. We could now quickly switch them all around to do what we thought was our brief. And the whole place nearly fucking explodes!
After a lot of dithering, and a lot of objections from the bard, we decide to just remove the original crystals and not replace them. Weird magic bullshit stops, the lightning between the towers fades...and the bard ceases to exist! Except that the REAL bard then steps back out of a magical mirror he'd been stuck in since touching it back in our first session in the tower.
Sneaky bugger had been deliberately confusing and sabotaging our efforts the entire time. Which was a surprisingly nice pay off to several ooc weeks of frustration.
Never apply malice to what could just as easily be ignorance, but in RP? It feels so much better knowing your fuck up was caused by someone deliberately screwing with you.
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Making a shitty one-page RPG called Oh Shit It’s the Killer. The premise is simple: you’re a high schooler spending the weekend in the woods with your besties. The Killer is there also. He is trying to the Kill you
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Public service announcement: Do not cast Detect Thoughts on the servant of a Nuckelavee, trying to get more details about its Master. You will not enjoy the fruits of your success.
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"Yes, there is a body in the bag of holding, but it's for a good reason."
Town experiencing a plague, brought by a Nuckelavee that was recently released from its prison by the big bad fae creature our party is trying to bring down. Nuckelavee has an underwater army waiting in the town river. Got jumped by an army scout en route to a plot point. Only when we killed said scout, he turned back into a human, suggesting he was probably a cursed victim of the plague. And he's just a teenager.
Luckily we have access to Raise Dead. Unluckily, we don't know what precisely caused this transformation in the first place, so don't know if we can fix it if we bring him back to life. So we've stashed him in the bag to be a tomorrow problem. Because our party is the opposite of murder hobos and we feel really bad about this, okay?
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Bonus pay!
So last session we were sneaking our way out of a valley that had been taken over by an army of evil paladins (a city fell on said valley because of a demon attack, and the evil paladins haaaate demons). Ran into a couple of squads on the way out, had a disagreement, disagreement turned violent, paladins ended up dead. No tears were shed.
This session we get given our marching orders...back into the valley to obtain things from some of the magical towers that fell off the formerly floating city. Discover the army is hiring mercenaries.
So, we've now signed up and are being paid by the people who wanted to lock down the area and keep folk like us out to go exploring to find what we're looking for.
Just need to hope my character's brother doesn't find out we're here.
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